


Heavy Skies

by Head_Of_Ianus



Category: James Bond (Craig movies), James Bond (Movies)
Genre: (implicit but not discussed), Angst, But so has Q, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Friendship, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hopeful Ending, James Bond Has Issues, Mental Health Issues, Minor Character Death, Pre-Slash, Q-centric, Strong Q (James Bond), The National Gallery Meeting Revived, not as bad as it sounds
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-18
Updated: 2020-05-18
Packaged: 2021-03-02 17:47:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24260827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Head_Of_Ianus/pseuds/Head_Of_Ianus
Summary: 002 died in a traffic accident on a sunny spring day.Q had been told not to get too attached to his agents, and he had gotten attached anyway. Some days he wishes he had not. Learning that there were things he could never protect his agents from was like losing his orientation - But if you are lost in the fog and the skies are heavy, it's best not to be alone.
Kudos: 20





	Heavy Skies

**Author's Note:**

> A few things I would like to mention before you start reading:  
> In regards to mental illnesses, none are actually being named or discussed in this story, my Q however does struggle with anxiety and I have written him having something close to an Axiety/Panic Attack in here. Bond is, even if his it's not very noticable, going through some trauma based dissociation (which isn't very discussed in this oneshot because it's very Q-centric) that is handled more in a companion piece of this story that takes place at the same time. I would like to post that story sometime as well, but as I was pretty dissociated myself when I wrote most of the first draft, that might take a while.  
> Also, I'd really love suggestions on how to write better paced/more suspenseful storylines, most things I write always turn out very introspective and quiet. Anyway, thank you all for reading :)

In films, bad things happened on rainy, dark days in the middle of autumn or winter, when dark clouds were towering above and you would feel cold everywhere you went.

Q had accepted his job as Quartermaster in full acknowledgement that he would have to deal with things nobody could properly prepare him for. They had told him in advance about the worst of things that could happen, that there was always a chance he‘d be kidnapped, or tortured, or killed, or all of the above. They had also disclosed the procedures that would be followed in any of these cases, neat proper plans for all the things that might go wrong, and he had been okay with it.  
Nihilistic youth and the knowledge that the two beings he cared for most – his cats, of course - would be taken care of in any case convinced him that all the restrictions and risks of being Quartermaster weren‘t too bothersome if it also included all the benefits (oh, he loved his work after all, and the chance to design and develop mostly without a budget was indecently close to a wet dream). He had also been lectured about attachment, and he hadn‘t really cared for that part.

But 002‘s death had been pointless at best, and a cruel joke at worst.

Even in books, tragedies always seem to happen on rainy days.  
Life doesn‘t bother setting the mood for catastrophe.

He had been idly chatting with Jones about her mission's next objective as she was making her way through late afternoon traffic on a main road in France (an autoroute, they would call it more accurately), sun basking down and the first hint of colour adorning the trees in the far distance. He had witnessed 002 make it out of an ambush barely half an hour ago without as much as a scratch on her. Q had been amazed, but not surprised.

Fondly, he had thought to himself that there was little that could surprise him any more in regard to her competence. Q had seen Jones drag herself out of burning rubble. He had watched her fooling experienced assassins into believing she was a little more than a dainty sweetheart, and he had watched her break their necks with barely a sound as soon as they entered private rooms.

He had told himself not to get attached to any of his agents, because he knew about the pace at which they died, and he had got quite attached anyway.

It was hard not to, considering how much he worked with them.  
And for all that they were professionals, they were still fellow human beings, so what could he do but feel sympathy when 005 complained about her flight being delayed? How could he not adore 008 for tripping over thresholds and then acting as though that never happened, even though he was clearly embarrassed? How could he not bond with 007 when he had talked him through waiting for extraction teams while he was bleeding out? It had been impossible not to love 002 after she had gifted him extremely over-priced tea as an excuse for missing equipment, thus accidentally inspiring her colleagues to do the same, but in more ridiculous fashions.

Of course, he had gotten attached to them.  
Of course, he had eventually lost some of them, and of course it hurt.  
But he‘d rather take the grief if it meant that he got to have a trusting relationship with his agents,  
because there still had been enough instances during which the trust they put in him without questions had saved their necks.

“If you are all settled, I would disconnect now. Please contact us back once you have arrived.“  
“Of course, Q - It's time for your lunch break anyway.“

Jones, whose hair – to her absolute delight – had recently started greying, had been one of the first agents to warm up to him, and Q was sure it had been mostly because his despicable baby face had awoken some sort of maternal instinct in her. At first, it had been worse to him than Bond telling him he still had spots, but nowadays he recognized that it was just Jones way to show that she cared for him and tease him at the same time. He had tried to keep the smile out of his voice, but he felt his vocal cords betraying him,

“I would advise you against trying to mother me, Jones, I am your handler, after all.“  
“Learn to take care of yourself, then -“  
“Well, that's the pot calling the kettle black, now.“

She had laughed then, and he had joined her in slightly muted fashion.  
He needed to appear at least somewhat professional in front of his minions, least they started to think they could get away with everything. It was bad enough he let Jones and Bond get away with most of their shenanigans.

“Stay safe, 002. I‘ll hear from you later.“  
“Of course. But hey, if you actually find a decent restaurant, we have to go out once I -“  
“Jones.“  
“Such a killjoy, Q, such a killjoy.“

Lunch that day had been pleasant.

Q came back from it to find his branch in near shock, his minions frozen in place as much as they could be, with all their training and experience. His jaw tightened.  
Must be Bond, he thought. But how? Well, there were a lot of potential reasons anything could go wrong with him, but -

“002 had a traffic accident-“, R informed him.  
She was close to stumbling over her own words, looking from him to her screens wildly,  
“Possibly fatal.“  
“Excuse me?“  
“Impact was about seven minutes ago-“

The shock set in like a kick to his gut, and something in his head screamed that this had to be some sort of joke Jones was playing on him. There had been no indication of anybody trying to sabotage or hinder her journey, bloody hell, no one but them should even know where she was going – He dropped his back. Muscles pulled tight, tensions tearing through him – he needed to do something, but what? What?, - and then his brain kicked back in, brain zeroing in on what to do now -

“Do we have vitals on her?“  
“Technically, yes.“

Q was already back in front of his own monitors, starting up the SmartBlood output monitor – if R insisted on being vague – his fingers twitched, why was this taking so fucking long?

“What does that mean?“  
“It shouldn‘t be possible.“  
“R.“

She answered him the same moment the window opened up.

“She’s gone.“

Q stared at his monitor. He blinked again. Still, no pulse rate. No respiratory rate. Temperature at a 37.5 °C, but surely dropping. A warning at the bottom of the screen would have informed him his agent’s vitals were going down suddenly, had he been there. Lethal injury suspected. No shit.

It was painfully quiet around him. Most of his subordinates could probably view the information displayed on his monitor. His branch should be in a productive uproar of people making calls, typing away, working through procedures and check lists at an agent being possibly fatally injured, but no one even tried to move. Because this wasn‘t just possibly fatal, it was fatal. Jones was gone, and she had gone without as much as a sound. Q knew they wanted to know from him what to do now. He should be giving orders, but his fingers were still trembling, and he still could only stare at his monitor. His voice came out strained.

“You said this was about seven minutes ago?“  
“Yes, she suddenly dropped from normal-“

That was all he needed to know to make sure, because he knew his program wasn‘t lying to him, but it had to be a false alarm. He pressed the sinking feeling in his stomach down, forced his thoughts to move and his mouth to form words. The typical response time for emergency response in France was at eight minutes, services were quicker on main road -

“She was still on the main road, right?“  
“According to her coordinates.“

Assuming someone had directly informed the police – he just wanted, needed to make sure. This had to be some strange case of his SmartBlood failing. It had to be – What's the closest news output reporting on traffic to the crash site? Ah, there it was. Something in French, and he had taken French in school, he should be able to translate – But R had come over to him. Placing a hand on his shoulder, lips pressed tight and pale, she pressed out -

“‘2:23pm, crash on A85 towards Angers, multiple vehicles involved‘. That's her.“

Q didn‘t sit down as much as his knees gave out. Voice cracking, he ordered someone to inform M.  
Finally, all hell broke loose.

Jones hadn‘t been in her assigned vehicle. Of course she hadn‘t been. She had been ambushed, crawled out, stolen some civilians car and had gotten on the road. That meant that when the vehicle in front of her lost grip on spilled oil, spun around and crashed into hers and multiple other cars, there had been none of the improvements normally installed on 00 vehicles that were bound to get tossed around. Worse, the airbag hadn‘t deployed. The car was entirely non-modified. She hadn‘t stood a chance, it had snapped her neck. Bone splinters had probably caused a spinal cord injury on C1 or C2 level. If she had been lucky, she had been knocked out by the impact. If she hadn‘t been, she must have noticed her lungs weren‘t taking in air and her body wasn‘t reacting any more, she must have felt herself suffocate. Q hoped she had been lucky.

They had been formally informed about these details about two hours after Q had returned from lunch. He had been sure that she must have died because her car had been manipulated, because of something work or mission related, but she hadn‘t. It had been a normal bloody traffic accident. One just as they happened all the time.

It seemed impossible to him.  
He had seen her get out of on ambush without a scratch just hours ago, and then she died in a simple crash? Because she took the one car in hundreds she could have taken that had an airbag that didn‘t deploy? “She simply was at the wrong place at the wrong time“, he had been told.  
Jones constantly was at the wrong place at the wrong time, and she had never died because of it before.  
How high were the odds of an active field agent to die like this? Impossibly low.  
Q was in terrible, terrible denial.

For once, he had left work with all his subordinates, once the night shift started coming into work. Their colleagues informed them of the days happenings, but Q just slipped away after checking in with all other agents on mission pedantically and making sure there was sure there was no way they would lose another one of them today. There wasn‘t. Unless Bond's plane crashed – how likely was that, now?

It shouldn‘t get to him this much. He had seen other agents die before, plenty of times, now.  
Still, Jones death made him feel as though he was losing his footing. She had been his agent, of course, but in a way she had been also been a friend, one of the people he just seemed to get along with naturally, and he felt the grief setting in every corner of his body. He couldn‘t bear thinking about her now. He‘d grieve about her later, when she was buried and her name itched in the damned wall, and he could breathe again, but he couldn‘t do it now. Q would only break down, and he couldn‘t allow himself that. His position required professionalism. If he let this visibly get to him, his subordinates would pick up on it and let it get to them as well. But the other agents out there needed them sharp, focused and collected. He had to at least keep the facade up.

Furthermore, today had been a kick-to-the-gut realization. There were dangers everywhere, and he could protect his agents from so many, from collapsing buildings and snipers perched in rooms opposite to theirs. And if he couldn‘t protect them, then it was his fault, to a certain degree. That was hard as well, left him sleepless sometimes, but it was something he knew how to learn from. It meant he knew how to save them next time, their death wasn‘t pointless. But he couldn‘t save his agents from tragedy, that was the only thing he had learned today, and it wasn‘t something he couldn‘t improve upon as he could with a faulty gun. He was powerless to this. It made his skin crawl.

Q was on his normal commute home and his fingers were twitching with anxiety. His head been in a knot since the initial chaos of learning about Jones death and fulfilling all the procedures that an agent passing brought with it had died down, and now that he was sitting with himself with nothing to do, his worries started eating away at him, spiralling into overthinking. He had been gnawing on the thought of Bond's plane crashing since it had entered his head as the seemingly only other way another of his agents might die today. The thought had gotten quite comfortable in his head space now. Maybe he should check Bond's flight status one last time? Oh god, what would he even do if that really happened, if the plane really just fell out of the sky, and Bond didn‘t get out? Bond wouldn‘t survive that, not even him, they would find his corpse in parts at best, and worse, Q couldn‘t do a bloody thing about it – he needed to check it was all alright still, he just needed to make sure -

He felt his heart hammering against his ribcage, he opened up the website of London, Stansted airport. His fingers were slightly sweaty and the touchscreen of his phone wouldn‘t react – what's taking so long, why isn‘t it loading – he kept pressing on the link – bloody hell – why – why did this feel like a deja-vu, why was this going just as earlier today, oh god. His throat burned fiercely -

Finally, the website opened up. There they were, the upcoming arrivals. He scrolled down – Bond's flight was due to set down in half an hour. It wasn‘t even delayed. All was fine.

Q let out a rough sigh that even to him sounded like he had been hyperventilating.  
Still trembling, he put his phone back into the inner pocket of his coat and his face into his hands. You need to slow down your breathing, he reminded himself. His senses started back up, took in the stale smell, the uncomfortable seats, the slight sour tinge on his tongue. He looked up and around. Barely anyone on the tube with him, at least. The few people present were politely pretending not to have noticed his near panic attack. Set down is when most plane accidents happen, a thought whispered. He managed to push it back away this time. Jesus fucking Christ, this was unacceptable.

Q got off his tube home at the next stop. Sat down in another that took him a few stations back, into the Northern line, got out at Charing Cross Station, down the street, across another one, and then he was on Trafalgar Square. 

The graceful guard of lions, the gurgling of the fountains behind it, and above all the towering pillars of the National Gallery. The rose-tinted red of the sun setting that had accompanied him most of his way here had started to bleed out into darker blues and blacks and Q pulled his parker somewhat tighter around himself. 8:15pm, he checked, well, 45 minutes would have to suffice.

Once again he was in front of The Fighting Temeraire, with her sky fading from orange to blue just as his was, because some things rightfully never changed. Q had made it a habit – and it was bad that he had habits such as these, because it made him predictable – to visit the National Gallery when he was feeling like this. His fingers were still twitching, he could feel muscles in his legs constricting without his permission as his thoughts were racing and neurons misfiring and honestly, he was miserable. Being here was better than being at home, alone, with nobody but himself. There were people here, at least. They were few now, because it was getting late, but they were quiet, nonobstructive, and still there nonetheless. It was better than his flat with only his bed waiting, because god, he didn‘t want to try to sleep right now. He still had his cats, as well, but they would sense his anxiety. So this was his way of coping, sue him, it was better than Bond's drinking. He‘d take staring at the grayish-green wallpaper of this bloody exhibition room over staring at white walls in his flat any day. Maybe studying the Sunflowers by Van Gogh would have been more soothing for his nerves, now, but most days he got stuck at the Temeraire anyway, and so did he today. It reminded him of meeting Bond for the first time, and that memory gave him enough reason to smile fondly most days. Q tried to summon back the way he had felt and thought back then, and it wasn‘t that long ago, was it?: He had been satisfied to meet Bond, even if he was being gravely underestimated by the other man – it just meant that there was a hint of challenge on Q's tongue and change had been a thing he had held dearly in his hands and it had all been just as he wanted. He felt terribly older now, and he long since realized he had never held change in his hands, it was never something he‘d controlled, it was just something that happened, and for a while it was just something that conquered MI6 alongside him. It brought Silva and killed the old M and had instead given them the new M, and he had still thought change was the wind that carried him, and them, the new generation. Then change also came and killed his agents and minions and replaced them, and he had started to realize that change was not his. Rather, change was an unstoppable force and there was no unmovable object, it seemed to him these days.

He would have liked to force the silent acceptance of endings portrayed in an old battleship peacefully being tugged to her last berth by the new generation into himself, but he could not find affinity to calm waters and cloudless skies. Inside him were a thousand small lightning strikes of panic and a heavy sky of denial and grey, and there were far too few paintings of thunderstorms, Q thought.  
A voice interrupted his introspection quite rudely.

“Still just a bloody big ship to me, Q.“

He jumped, full force nervous energy in every part of his body and turned towards the man that had approached him, but it was Bond, and Bond was here safely, and he couldn‘t be mad about that, so he took a breath and asked instead:  
“What are you doing here, Bond? Shouldn‘t you just have set down-?“  
“I heard Jones died.“

There was a silent break, and Q knew his shoulders were drawn up, he knew that Bond knew his shoulders were drawn up, and he still couldn‘t bring himself to drop them and to look into his agents eyes, as he usually would, as he should, because he was giving away all the signs that something was wrong. He stared at the wall behind Bond, but he at least forced himself to answer slowly instead of just vomiting the words out in a mess.

“She did. Fatal car accident, the airbag didn‘t deploy.“

Slowly, he looked at Bond properly, and he frankly -

“You look like shit.“  
“So do you, thank you. Was the accident manipulated?“  
“No, it wasn‘t.“  
“Huh.“

He clenched his jaw. Here it was: The thought how pointless, how stupid all of this was.  
He lost a bloody agent to an airbag that wouldn‘t deploy, for no other reason, goddammit. Bond probably thought they should just kick him out of any leadership position because clearly he was incapable, and he almost spit out:

“No, it wasn‘t, it wasn‘t fucking manipulated, it was a normal fucking car accident and Jones just fucking happened to take the one car with the one airbag that didn‘t fucking deploy and it's – it is so – pointless, Bond, it is -“  
“She was in France?“

Q blinked and was speechless for a second.

“Yes?“  
“When are they going to send over her body?“  
“A few days, maybe.“  
“Then her funeral's going to be in a week and a bit.“

Bond sat down next to him, and Q had meant it when he had told Bond he looked like shit. The bags were back underneath his eyes, and he hadn‘t shaved today. The stubble always gave him a washed out look. There was his navy blue jumper though, and Q still liked that one. It just looked terrible with the green of the wallpaper of this room. Bond looked tired, worn out and now that he paid attention, his eyes didn‘t glint as they usually would, there was nothing sharp left in them. They were full of fog or drowning in an entire ocean. Q would have asked about it, but it really wasn‘t his place to.  
The Temeraire was still just coming home. Bond's voice was soft, but it was unwavering.

“You don‘t want to talk about her? Missions with Jones were always quite something.“  
“Not yet.“

Q swallowed around the strain that was building in his throat once again and tried to blink away the burn and blur in his eyes. Stories would only remind him Jones was gone now, that there were no new stories to be written, and then he would cry. He should at least try not to make a fool out of himself, Bond was technically a colleauge, and he shouldn‘t give him any more reasons to think worse of him than he already did. He needed to keep some of the man's respect. The man was already quite insufferable enough.

“I‘d like to hear them later, though.“  
“I‘ll be sure to dig out some of the weirdest ones.“

There was silence again. Together, they looked out onto the ocean caught in a frame.

“It was quite rude of me, to sit you down in front of this work of all the ones I could have chosen for our first meeting – telling you about the inevitability of time, of how you would be replaced and you were getting old. I was wrong, too. You are sticking around quite a bit.“  
“Honestly, I just thought you were being a pretty pretentiously posh prick“,

There was a hollow bit of humour in Bonds voice, and it tugged at the corners of Q‘s mouth.

“You barely ever come home to London that quietly, though. I don‘t think you physically can. Hell, if were a battleship you would probably either win with as much turmoil as possible or sink down to the bottom of the sea with a bang.“  
“Well, our dear Fighting Temeraire isn‘t coming on her own entirely either, she's got someone to pull her back to her harbor, so to say.“

There was just tiredness left in Bond's voice now, and when Q glanced at him, he knew Bond still wasn‘t entirely present yet. He had seen it a few times with him now, when he came back from missions.  
It was as though he wasn‘t in his head space, not really, but rather stuck in thick fog. It didn‘t happen on missions, it didn‘t happen when he had been home for a while, it only ever happened in the early or late hours of the days, when he came back from missions and stumbled down to Q-Branch without taking note of much anything around him. Q always thought he looked as though his usual self was still stuck somewhere else and his body was just doing all it had been trained to do on autopilot.

“How did your mission go? Did you secure the data?“  
“We got Fernby and the flash drive.“  
“That's the security breach done for, then.“  
“I don‘t think she did it just because she wanted to fuck MI6 over, Q.“  
“Probably not, we'll figure it out.“

Bond looked at the Temeraire again, and got up, slowly. Q didn‘t make a move yet, it would be better to just let his agent leave for now and end his visit after him.

“You look like your blood sugar levels are down, as pale as you are.“  
“I‘m pale because there's not much sun in London, as it is, unfortunately, part of England.  
As you might know, Bond.“  
“I was trying to invite you to have dinner with me, Q.“

Usually, he might have thought that Bond was bantering or trying to charm his way out of a diatribe about lost equipment, but Bond was tired now, and he still looked lost in the fog inhibiting his head. When you get lost on marshland during thick fog, it's best to find railroad tracks to follow, he had been told when he was younger. Bond didn‘t want to be alone when he was still stuck in fog, that's why he came down to Q-Branch to return equipment at ungodly hours in the night, that's why he wanted to have dinner with someone else now. Being alone was unbearable when you didn‘t particularly like your head, and if he was honest with himself he knew he didn‘t like his head too much either, at least today. He didn‘t mind being Bond's railroad tracks for now, not if it meant he got railroad tracks to follow as well. He got up and shot a long last glance at the Temeraire for today. Dinner with a colleague, maybe a friend even, he didn‘t bother trying to categorize it, and so he turned to Bond with a slightly cheeky smirk:

“Sure, let's go grab something. I am going to call you James, though.“  
“Oh? Isn‘t that a bit too informal for my stern Quartermaster?“  
“Just calling you Bond is going to sound very strange to others, after all.“  
“Because ‚Q‘ is so much more inconspicuous.“  
“Shut up, James.“

A flash of brightness found it's way back into his eyes, and he grinned,

“I am going to call Quentin, Q, don‘t tempt me.“  
“You wouldn‘t dare -“  
“Try me.“  
“Bloody hell-“

Eventually, the two of them settled on something Italian (Bond had just had Chinese yesterday and Q couldn‘t stomach most fast food even on the best of his days), and Q learned that apparently, Bond didn‘t actually think all art is pretentious (he just really disliked Turner and his obsession with the sea), that he mostly read dystopian stories (Q had mentioned 1984 and Bond had perked up a bit), and one of the few only classics he had actually read instead of just skimming through summaries in case anyone ever asked him was “The portrait of Dorian Grey“, and yes, he had quite liked it, because he felt some strange affinity to hedonism. Also, Bond bloody hated the entire sport of golf, and without any reason. Q was terribly, terribly fond of him, even if he embarrassed himself quite a bit getting somewhat tipsy in front of Bond. And he shouldn‘t get any more attached than he already knew he was, but he did anyway, because it would be worth it after all. He still couldn‘t sleep when he got home, but at least it was already almost 1am when he finally lay down. Only six hours left to try falling asleep. Jones was still in his head, and she was going to hang around, but he felt a bit more ready to welcome her warmly when she wandered into his dreams (like a friend from far away coming to visit).


End file.
